LeFlore Commission Rescinds Ten Commandments Decision

POTEAU — Citing their responsibility as stewards of taxpayer funds, LeFlore County commissioners voted not to allow placement of a Ten Commandments monument on the courthouse lawn.

POTEAU — Citing their responsibility as stewards of taxpayer funds, LeFlore County commissioners voted not to allow placement of a Ten Commandments monument on the courthouse lawn.

Monday’s 3-0 decision rescinds an April 1 vote to allow the privately funded monument to be placed there.

Commission Chairman Lance Smith said he checked into the resolution of a similar monument issue in Haskell County. In making the motion not to allow the monument on courthouse property, Smith cited a responsibility not to initiate a situation that could land LeFlore County in a lawsuit it “probably couldn’t win.”

Smith said a Haskell County commissioner told him the monument placed there has since been moved about 80 feet to the east to private property. He said the Haskell commissioner told him the county was not allowed to place it on public property.

Monday’s decision, an obviously uncomfortable one for the commissioners, came with little discussion.

No audience members spoke up, LeFlore County Clerk Kelli Ford said.

“It is too bad that we cannot display the Ten Commandments,” Smith said after the meeting, “If people would abide by them, this world would be a different place.”

On April 1, LeFlore County community activist and volunteer Charlie Horsley asked the county board to decide one way or another regarding the monument’s placement, saying he would accept its decision without recrimination either way. Horsley reminded Commissioners Smith, Ceb Scott and Derwin Gist that the board had originally approved the monument’s placement in April 2009.

He was not aware the item was on the agenda for Monday’s meeting, Horsley said Monday afternoon.

“That’s what I tried to get them to do three weeks ago; I tried to get them to make a vote to let me do it or not to do it, and they voted to let me. Now they’ve changed their minds, and that’s their right. I accept that,” Horsley said.

The monument’s county property placement was tabled repeatedly while awaiting the outcome of the lengthy Haskell County legal challenge, and Community State Bank of Poteau donated a site for it nearby on private property in front of the company’s main bank branch.

Horsley said the monument will stay there, in front of the bank and Braum’s restaurant. For now, placing one at the courthouse is off; it will be accomplished when God wills it, Horsley said.

Overall, the Ten Commandments placement movement has monuments in 29 states and six countries, and will not stop, Horsley said.

In July 2010, the American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma and Haskell County reached an agreement in which the county would pay $199,000 over 10 years to cover the court costs and legal fees for the lawsuit the county lost. The ACLU represented a Haskell County resident who challenged the monument at Stigler as government-endorsed religious expression.

The Stigler monument was moved March 17, 2010, to property about a block from the courthouse after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the county’s appeal of a June 2009 U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals decision. The 10th Circuit Court found the religious monument was government-endorsed, unconstitutional, and so must be moved from public property. The Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the appeal let the 10th Circuit Court decision stand.

Horsley became involved in the Ten Commandments project when the former project spearhead, former Poteau Mayor Don Barnes, became too ill to complete the needed legwork and asked him to help with it, Horsley has said. Barnes died in February at age 71.

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